Participating scholars

Platform director:

Linnea Jensdotter is a postdoctoral researcher at the CTR. Her research focuses on religion in public and political discourse and how Christianity is used in populist and nationalist constructions of so-called Swedish values.

Linnea Jensdotter

She completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at Uppsala University (2021) by authoring the dissertation “Religion och politik i hybrida mediemiljöer: En analys av kommentarer till nyheter om Miljöpartiet, Kristdemokraterna och Sverigedemokraterna på Facebook”. Her research interest includes the various aspects of religion in the public sphere, with a particular focus on digital media.

Affiliated scholars:

Jayne Svenungsson is Professor of Systematic Theology. Her research interests include apocalyptic and messianic motifs in modern Western philosophy and political thinking. She has published extensively on various aspects of political theology and philosophy of history.

Jayne Svenungsson

Among her recent publications are Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism, and the Development of the Spirit (Berghahn 2016), Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Future of Theology (with M. Björk, Palgrave 2017), and The Ethos of History: : Time and Responsibility (with S. Helgesson, Berghahn 2018).

Patrik Fridlund is Associate Professor (docent) in Philosophy of Religion. His research interests include  plurality of religions, religion and politics, post-truth politics, and populism. Deputy director of Logoi.ph.

Patrik Fridlund

Among his recent publications are ’Post-truth Politics, Responsible Irresponsibility and Ethics — Postmodernist Philosophers Revisited’ (2020), ’Post-truth Politics, Performatives and the Force’ (2020), ’Le dialogue interreligieux est-il vraiment un dialogue des rationalités religieuses ou culturelles ?’ (2019).

Aaron James Goldman is a postdoctoral researcher at the CTR. His research focuses on the intersection of ethics, theology, and conceptions of critique in Early Modern to Post-Enlightenment European philosophy and religious thought.

Aaron James Goldman

To complete his PhD in Philosophy of Religion at Harvard University (2020), he authored the dissertation ‘Kierkegaard on Faith and Desire: The Limits of Christianity and the Human Heart’; he has recently published in the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (2020). Aaron has academic side interests in how the field of religious studies can interface with environmental ethics, science-fiction literature, and pop culture.

Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg is Associated Professor (docent) of Ethics. Her research interests include the church in late modern society, the concept of ‘religious literacy’ and the interrelation of religion, social practices and democracy.

Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg

 Among her recent publications are ‘Cultivating the Socially Competent Body: Bodies and Risk in Swedish Programs for Social Emotional learning in Preschools and Schools’ (2014), ‘Christianity in a Post-Christian Context: Immigration, Church Identity and the Role of Religion in Public Debates’ (2018), and (forthcoming) ‘Radical Plurality on Universal Grounds’ (with R. Bobrowitz) and ‘The Orthodox “Unorthodox”. From Populism to Pluralism (with R. Bobrowitz).

Tornike Metreveli is a sociologist of religion focusing on Orthodox Christianity’s interaction with secular politics and nationalism. Before joining Lund, he had various research fellowships at the University of St. Gallen, Harvard, and London School of Economics.

Tornike Metreveli

His recent book Orthodox Christianity and the Politics of Transition: Ukraine, Serbia and Georgia (Routledge 2021) focuses on the comparative-historical church and state interactions, giving a grassroots and institutional account of counterintuitive secularization agendas, church involvement in public policies and revolutions, as well as interdenominational competition for the status of the national church.

Sinikka Neuhaus is Head of Teacher Education and Assistant Head of Department and Programmes Director at the Department of Educational Sciences. She has a PhD in Church History.

Sinikka Neuhaus

Since 2003 she has worked with Teacher Education focusing on democratic citizenship and since 2014 she has collaborated with Nottingham University on refugee education, at the moment with the project “The Art of Belonging: Social integration of young migrants in urban contexts through cultural place making”. Among her resent publication is Theorizing Policy and Practice in Refugee Education: conceptualising ‘safety’, ‘belonging’, ‘success’ and ‘participatory parity’ in England and Sweden (with Joanna McIntyre, 2021).

Mika Vähäkangas is Professor in Mission Studies and Ecumenics. His research interests include encounters between churches, cultures and religions as well as interaction between religion and politics. His area of concentration has been Africa.

Mika Vähäkangas

His recent publications include Context, Plurality, and Truth: Theology in World Christianities (Pickwick 2020), Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives (edited with Karen Lauterbach, Brill 2020) and Contextual Theology: Skills and Practices of Liberating Faith (edited with Sigurd Bergmann, Routledge 2021).

Photo: Minerva Juolahti

Mårten Björk is a postdoctoral researcher at the CTR and at Campion Hall in Oxford. He defended his dissertation, Life Outside Life: The Politics of Immorality, 1914-1945, in 2018.

Mårten Björk

At Campion Hall, he is working on the project ‘The Matter of the Soul’ and he is the PI of the project ‘The End of Law’ at the CTR. His research areas include political theology, secularization and metaphysics. He is currently reworking his dissertation to a book for Bloomsbury. He is editor of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Future of Theology (with J. Svenungsson, Palgrave 2017), and has written the reportage book Utan framtid: Protester i den globala krisens spår (Celanders 2013).

Aron Engberg is Lecturer in Religious Studies at Jönköping University, and in Mission Studies and Ecumenics at Lund University. His research interests include the faith and politics Evangelical Christianity, Religion and populism, Language Ideology, and the Anthropology of Christianity.

Aron Engberg

His geographical focus is mainly on Israel/Palestine, the United States, and Sweden. His most recent publications are Walking on the Pages of the Word of God (Brill, 2019), and “Navigating the Biblical Mandate” (Exchange, Brill, 2020). 

Valentin Jeutner is Associate Professor of Law at Lund University's Faculty of Law. His research focuses on foundational questions of (international) law.

Valentin Jeutner

His recent publications include On the Distinction Between Excarnate and Incarnate Law (Journal for Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Law (2020)), [l]ex machina: Unlikely encounters of international law and technology (Lund 2020) and Pirates in Suits: Carl Schmitt, ‘Ordinary Businessmen’ and Crimes of Aggression (Nordic Journal of International Law (2019)).

Katharina Keim has a PhD in Jewish Studies from the University of Manchester and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Jewish Studies at the CTR. Her area of expertise is in two key areas: (i) the reception of Biblical tradition in post-Biblical Jewish literature, and (ii) Jewish-Christian-Islamic interreligious relations from the birth of Christianity to the early Islamic centuries.

Katharina Keim.

Her research into ancient and early Medieval sources of all three religions offers a valuable corrective to contemporary political and religious ideologies regarding the religious ‘other’, demonstrating the important historical interrelationships between the three faiths and unpacking rhetorically linked concepts of religion, race, and nationality in the modern world.

Ov Cristian Norocel is Associate Senior Lecturer in the Department of Gender Studies. His research applies an intersectional lens to issues of right-wing populist political communication during election periods; political discourses aimed at normalizing extreme right opinions; as well as the creation and maintenance of various power hierarchies within these discourses.

Ov Cristian Norocel
Sidansvarig: hege_irene.markussenctr.luse | 2023-01-19